Facebook 'could have prevented Lee Rigby murder'

Facebook has been named as the internet company which failed to pass on
crucial information that could have stopped the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby

Lee Rigby was run over and butchered by Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo outside Woolwich barracks in south-east London in 2013Photo: PA

By Peter Dominiczak, Tom Whitehead, Martin Evans and Gordon Rayner

12:00AM GMT 26 Nov 2014

Facebook failed to pass on information that could have prevented the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby and is a “safe haven for terrorists”, a report has concluded.

Michael Adebowale used the social networking site to express his “intent to murder a soldier in the most graphic and emotive manner” five months before the 2013 Woolwich attack.

The report found that Facebook had not been aware of that specific exchange.

However, Parliament’s intelligence and security committee discovered that Facebook had previously shut down Adebowale’s accounts on the site because he had discussed terrorism, but failed to relay concerns to the security services.

Rigby, 25, was run over and butchered by Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo outside Woolwich barracks in south-east London on May 22 last year.

David Cameron accused internet companies of failing to assist in the fight against terrorism, warning that they had a “moral duty” to act because “their networks are being used to plot murder and mayhem”.

He claimed that the heads of global web firms had a “distorted libertarian ideology” that made them “wholly detached from responsibility to governments and to the peoples that we democratically represent”.

“If companies know that terrorist acts are being plotted, they have a moral responsibility to act,” Mr Cameron said. “I cannot think of any reason why they would not tell the authorities.”

He made clear that he wants to create new laws to ensure that the security services are able to monitor the online activity of potential terrorists. Previous proposals to give security services greater access to communications stored by internet firms — the so-called “snoopers’ charter” — were blocked by the Liberal Democrats.

The 192-page report by the committee found that, ultimately, the British intelligence agencies could not have prevented the murder.

However, it was disclosed that the UK security services had tried to intensify their surveillance of Adebowale hours before Fusilier Rigby was killed.

Adebolajo was also a high priority for MI5 during two operations. The agencies put “significant effort” into investigating him and employed a broad range of intrusive techniques.

However, none of these uncovered any evidence of attack planning. Adebowale was never more than a low-level subject of interest, the report states.

The most significant criticism was reserved for social media companies including Facebook, which was not named in the report due to a “confidentiality agreement”.

In the one specific exchange relating to the killing of a soldier, Adebowale and another extremist, code-named Foxtrot, discussed different methods ranging from martyrdom to the use of a knife.

In a chilling echo of what was to come, Adebowale expressed concern about attacking soldiers at their place of work because of security arrangements and wrote that “less secure locations should be considered”.

Commenting on why those exchanges were not picked up by Facebook, a GCHQ officer told the committee: “They left the one that said, ‘Let’s kill a soldier.’ That didn’t meet their criteria [for closure].”

Crucially, the committee found that Facebook “had previously closed some of Adebowale’s accounts because their automated system deemed them to be associated with terrorism”. Despite this, the site did not pass details to the authorities.

“If Adebowale’s exchange with Foxtrot had been seen by MI5 at the time, then we believe that the investigation would have increased to Priority 1, unlocking all the extra resources this would have entailed,” the report states.

“This is the single issue which – had it been known at the time – might have enabled MI5 to prevent the attack.”

It adds that Facebook does not “regard itself as under any obligation to ensure that its systems identify such exchanges, or to take action or notify the authorities when its communications services appear to be used by terrorists.

There is therefore a risk that, however unintentionally, it provides a safe haven for terrorists to communicate within.”

It adds that there is “considerable difficulty” in accessing online communications on sites belonging to US-based internet firms such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo.

Several companies do not cooperate with the security services because they claim they “need to protect users’ privacy”.

But the report claims: “Where there is a possibility that a terrorist atrocity is being planned, that argument should not be allowed to prevail.”

A Facebook spokesman said: “Like everyone else, we were horrified by the vicious murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby. We don’t comment on individual cases but Facebook’s policies are clear, we do not allow terrorist content on the site and take steps to prevent people from using our service for these purposes.”